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Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face & Welcome to America

Monday, 25th January 2010

At last, real change we can believe in: the Obama administration is lifting the pernicious ban on haggis that for more than 20 years* has deprived Americans the chance to munch the great chieftain o' the pudden-race.

True, during the long, dark years of prohibition some enterprising American butchers stepped into the breach and made versions of the noble creature that attempted to emulate the real thing. While fine as far as they go such enterprises can only go so far. Trying to make haggis without using sheeps' lungs is, in the end, an insuperable problem. All heart but not enough pluck, you might say.

So here at least Obama has achieved something that neither his predecessor nor Bill Clinton had the courage to take on. Granted, this may not rise to even the Midnight Backetball level of small but promising initiatives launched on the back of electoral setbacks. But, my friends, it is a start...

Should you wish to be a have-a-go-hero and make your own haggis, The Guardian's Tim Hayward has an excellent step-by-step demonstration.

Anyway, Happy Burns Night everyone. Here's Eddi Reader singing Ae Fond Kiss at Celtic Connections:

*Haggis was a casualty of the great BSE-scare and it was claimed that feasting upon haggis would mean you'd die of scrapie. Like so many other panics this one proved to be all but groundless. Funny that.

Filed under: Americana (458 more articles) , Obama (355 more articles) , Scotland (456 more articles)

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Craig Strachan

January 25th, 2010 4:10pm Report this comment

There goes the haggis-smuggling business.

(There's a particular sniffer dug at LAX who's an ace haggis-buster, to the point where the notorious Santa Monica haggis cartel hatched a plan to nobble him. Lorne sausages were involved, or so I was telt.)

Frank S

January 25th, 2010 4:10pm Report this comment

So he's not all bad then, this Obama? Or is this something that was out-of-scope for Alinsky, Wright, Emanuel, and suchlike advisors, mentors, and guides?

Craig Strachan

January 25th, 2010 4:11pm Report this comment

(Happy Burns night, Alex).

Snowman

January 25th, 2010 4:33pm Report this comment

and to think that so many were critical of him accepting the Nobel trinket.

Happy Burns to you all, too. Typing this, I’m still digesting the sheeps’ lungs filled real Monty, of which I’m rather fond. Not a bad contribution by the Scots to the world cuisine. Unique, I reckon.

Fergus Pickering

January 25th, 2010 5:52pm Report this comment

Are you sure about lings, Alex? I thought it was a stomach. Of course in Edinburgh back in the 60s it was the deep-fried haggis, that looked like a large turd. That's the one you eat with chips. It also exists in tins. My best friend's father travelled in tinned haggis. There were always dozens of tins of the stuff in the house. At New Year I can remember going out to dig potatoes to have with the tinned haggis at about four in the morning.

Beefeater

January 25th, 2010 7:05pm Report this comment

It takes a Great Chieftain to recognize another.

Alex Massie

January 25th, 2010 10:53pm Report this comment

Fergus P: Indeed, the tinned stuff is pretty ropey. And if I may be permitted a heretical culinary thought: battered haggis from the chippie is often improved by the addition of chip-shop curry sauce...

Craig Strachan

January 25th, 2010 11:52pm Report this comment

That's nothing. Some lassie interviewed on the BBC World Service yesterday was threatening "haggis burritos" as a result of the lifting of the ban.

Alex Massie

January 26th, 2010 12:04am Report this comment

Craig S: By"threatening" you mean "promising", right? Sounds good: imagine a Caledonian breakfast burrit: haggis, black pudding and a fried egg. Delicious!

I made haggis ravioli once. It was a success.